


Advanced TARDIS Maintenance for the Determined Highlander

by Kaesa



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Humor, Metafiction, Non-Euclidian Space, Overly Clingy Time Machines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 12:27:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaesa/pseuds/Kaesa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jamie has offended the TARDIS, and now he's just a little bit turned around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advanced TARDIS Maintenance for the Determined Highlander

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kristin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kristin/gifts).



> Thank you to my wonderful beta, thinkatory, for brainstorming, encouragement, and pointing out the bit where I suddenly shifted into present tense for no earthly reason. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> Also, thank you, kristin, for letting me write about Jamie. I absolutely love Jamie, and I may have done a little dance around the room when I got the assignment.
> 
> This fic is meant to take place between "The Invasion" and "The Krotons," but doesn't depend upon knowing either episode.

Jamie had not actually been looking forward to some peace and quiet that day, or any day, for that matter.  He knew better than to expect that.  In fact, a lot of the time, Jamie wasn't entirely certain how many days had passed between events, because they spent so much time running away from monsters that they hardly had time to sleep.

It was _wonderful_.  But it would've been nice to have a _little_ break between adventures.  Just a short one.  But just as soon as they'd got into the TARDIS and shut the doors behind them, having foiled another Cyberman invasion, the Doctor rubbed his hands together with glee and said, "I know where we should go next!"  And Jamie knew there was no hope of getting a nice nap or a hot meal before facing their next batch of killer metal men or megalomaniac dictators.

"Aye, but will we ever get there?" Jamie asked.  "In case you haven't noticed, Doctor, the TARDIS doesn't listen to you any more than we do when you tell us not to wander off."

"Now, Jamie," the Doctor started, "there's no need to be snide.  The TARDIS may be a little… eccentric, but you must admit the scenic route is much more exciting."  He pulled the little lever that made the TARDIS go, and Jamie felt the familiar vwooshing of time travel at least as much as he heard it.

Jamie and Zoe exchanged a look.  "Well," said Zoe, "we do have to give him that much, Jamie.  Getting shot at by Cybermen is rather exciting.  I'd probably use some other words to describe it, though."

"Don't you like surprises?  Where's your sense of adventure, Zoe?" the Doctor asked, all innocence.  He got on his knees to examine a jumble of wires sticking out of the console.

"I think I left it in the Land of Fiction," she said, amused.

The Doctor made a face from behind the console.  "Oh, that's not fair, Zoe, _you_ suggestedwe --"

"I think mine's with those awful Quarks," said Jamie.

The Doctor harrumphed.  "Just because of a few navigational glitches --"

Zoe turned to Jamie, and with a remarkably straight face, she asked, "Are you certain you didn't leave it in your other sporran?"

"Hey, you're right, I didn't think of that!" Jamie said, his face brightening.  "I'll go check!"  She started giggling.

"Oh, you two," said the Doctor, rolling his eyes.  "Wouldn't you like to get out and stretch your legs for a --"

But his next words were drowned out by the boom the TARDIS made whenever it settled onto a new planet.  The Doctor looked around, blinking.

"So where are we, then?" Jamie asked, expectantly.  "Or where do _you_ think we are?"  Of course, as much as he enjoyed giving the Doctor a hard time about his inability to control the TARDIS, Jamie never tired of strange new people and places.

"I... don't know," said the Doctor, hesitantly.

"You see, he admits it!" said Jamie, laughing.

"No, no, no, I mean I didn't land the TARDIS," said the Doctor.  He hurried over to the console.  "I don't like this, not at all.  Zoe, would you look at the dials over there and tell me what the atmospheric readings are like?"

Zoe hurried over and frowned at the panel.  "The atmosphere's breathable, Earthlike mixture of mostly nitrogen and oxygen....  I don't see anything that should be disturbing, but that's no guarantee we won't run into something nasty."

"Well, the landing was a bit, ah, unexpected, but we might as well go out and have a look," said the Doctor.  But there was a tinge of worry in his voice, and when he pulled the lever to open the TARDIS doors, they only opened very slightly before snapping shut with a thud.

"...Doctor?" Jamie asked.

"Ah.  I was afraid that might happen," said the Doctor.

"What is it?" Zoe asked.

"Well, it's been a few centuries since the TARDIS had a proper overhaul," said the Doctor.  "I don't think it wants us to leave.  Between one thing and another, I suppose I haven't quite kept up with the maintenance as I should have, and --"

"Oh no," said Jamie.  "You mean we're stuck in this pile of old bolts until you can work out what little wire thing you put in the wrong way?"

"It's not as simple as that, Jamie," said the Doctor.  "Time travel is a very tricky business.  It could take _months!_ "

"Well, then," said Jamie, "looks like we'll be getting some peace and quiet whether we want it or not."

"Doctor," said Zoe, brightly, "Why don't we look in the TARDIS manual?"

"Oh, I haven't seen that for centuries," said the Doctor, dismissively.  "I've no idea where it wandered off to."

"No, no, I saw it, it was somewhere around here the other day," said Zoe, frowning.  "Or ...how _do_ your people deal with the grammatical implications of time travel?" she asked.

Jamie knew this conversation was going to go somewhere full of clauses and gerunds and other terrible beasties, so he wandered off to the TARDIS wardrobe room, which was where odds and ends tended to gather when not in use.  He spotted the dog-eared blue manual, carefully pulled it out from under the too-short table leg it had been placed under, and brought it back to the console room, where, sure enough, Zoe and the Doctor were deep in a conversation about something called a 'subjunctive,' which was probably made of antimatter.  "Doctor, is this it?" he asked, waving the manual.

"Oh," he said, looking very disappointed indeed.  "Yes.  Yes, it is.  How, er, resourceful, Jamie."

"Wonderful!" said Zoe, clapping her hands together.  She took the manual from Jamie.  "Let's see... troubleshooting... aha!"

"Oh, Zoe, really, you don't have to -- I'd really prefer to do this on my own --"

"Oh no, the TARDIS is _fascinating_ ," said Zoe enthusiastically.  "I'd _love_ to see the inner workings of it!"

"Aye, well, you're welcome," said Jamie.

"Zoe, I really don't think --" the Doctor started.

"Step One," said Zoe, reading from the manual.  "...Have you tried turning all the TARDIS' systems entirely off and then on?"

"Well, that would include the life support systems," said the Doctor.  "So I'd really rather not, if it's all the same to you and the manual."

"Oh!  Oh, yes, of course," said Zoe.  "Hmmm.  Well, the next step is to open and close your... er.  Open and close your aspect of the Eye of Harmony to realign it with the ur-Eye."  She frowned.  "I don't know what that means," she said.

"It's nothing important," said the Doctor, quickly.

Zoe frowned, and turned several more pages.  "Is this a Type 40 or a Type 40-B?" she asked.  "Because the next step has big bold letters telling you not to try it with a 40-B or later model."  The Doctor sighed heavily, and with great reluctance went to look over Zoe's shoulder.

"I'll just be on my way, then," Jamie said.  "Lots of naps to take."  He paused for a moment, to see if anyone objected, but as Zoe and the Doctor were now poring over the manual, nobody did.  So he walked back into the TARDIS to find his bedroom.

Jamie had never had his own bedroom before he'd run off with Ben and Polly and the Doctor, and it was always a little strange, trying to get to sleep without anyone snoring nearby and no one to wake him up if the redcoats snuck up on him.  But when he was very quiet, he heard the TARDIS' engines humming, and the room itself was very nice.  There was a soft bed, a roof that never, ever leaked, and a fancy sort of flushing privy in the next room.  Considering all that, he felt a bit guilty for giving the Doctor a hard time about not being able to handle the TARDIS.  It was a terrible mode of transportation if you wanted to actually get where you were going, but a comfortable place to live.

But Jamie was getting uneasy as the corridor continued to stretch further off into the distance.  Was it usually this long a walk?  Where was the doorway to his room?  He hadn't passed it, because he'd have gone by Zoe's room right after that, and you couldn't miss the door to her room -- she'd painted it with something that made it light up in red or green, to tell you whether she was in or not.  Had he taken a wrong turn?  Surely his room was here _somewhere._   Rooms did not just vanish, in Jamie's experience.  They were made of sturdier stuff than that.

Jamie always knew where he was in his home time.  Generations of McCrimmons had farmed and hunted and fought their ways through most of the places he'd been to, before the Doctor, and he had a good head for landmarks and stars and directions.  But the TARDIS had no stars and Jamie's compass didn't work there, and the landmarks had all vanished, so by the time Jamie had thought to backtrack -- after three or four right turns, or possibly five -- but that wasn't even _possible,_ was it? -- he was thoroughly confused.

Finally, very cross, he stopped and shouted at the ceiling, "Oh, come on!  Can you not even manage to have the same rooms in the same order?  Earth buildings aren't nearly as fancy as this, but somehow _they_ manage."

He looked around.  Nothing had changed.  Not that he'd expected it to.  He felt a little embarrassed, because he could just picture Zoe and the Doctor tsking and explaining to Jamie that walls couldn't hear.  And they would use that patronizing people-from-the-future voice.

So he rolled his eyes at himself and decided to continue onward without worrying about exactly where he was going.  Even if he didn't get to his room, he would have to end up _somewhere_ eventually.  He marched bravely on, through three left turns, a heavy door, and then, quite suddenly, into very deep water.

Jamie surfaced, coughing and sputtering and treading water.  He was in some sort of basin, and the water had a chemical odor to it, but it seemed to be meant for swimming.  There were steps into the pool at the far end, a ladder nearby, and a sign that said NO RUNNING.  Well, it _had_ said NO RUNNING originally, but somebody had crossed out the NO, and added HIGHLY RECOMMENDED IN CASE OF: DALEKS, CYBERMEN, MONOIDS underneath.  Jamie wondered what a Monoid was.

Jamie swam to the nearest ladder and climbed out.  He looked towards the door he'd come out of, and saw that the doorway was flush against the side of the pool.  Not only did this seem like a malevolent sort of floor plan, but Jamie would need something solid to stand on to get back through the door.  "Oh, very funny," he said to the TARDIS at large, but when he turned around, there was a table full of large, fluffy towels.

"Thanks," he said grudgingly.  He wrapped a towel around himself like a cloak, shivering slightly, and walked onward into the TARDIS, dripping.

The next room looked like it must be some sort of museum.  There were glass cases full of clean white skeletons -- here was a dragon-looking thing with six legs, and on the other side of the room Jamie spotted what he thought at first was a rhinoceros or a unicorn, but it only it had one eye.  There was one case full of tiny, delicate creatures with hooves -- the largest would have fitted in Jamie's hand, but upon seeing the size of the teeth the beast had, Jamie decided he was glad it was not alive.

He examined the brass plaque under the case, supposing it would tell him what these creatures were called, but the only notation was that these had come from a planet called Sarn, and that somebody called Chesterton had helped with the excavation.

Jamie hurried quickly through the museum.  It wasn't that he thought the bones were dangerous, but... well, he _had_ seen odd things in his travels, and Jamie reasoned that a man who had once fought murderous seaweed and robotic Yetis ought to know enough to keep an open mind and stay on his guard.  And by this time, he was fairly certain the TARDIS was having a bit of fun with him, and that it could have a nasty sense of humor.

He was quite relieved when the glass cases full of bones turned into bookcases.  Not that he was anywhere within the TARDIS that he recognized, but it seemed to him that books were marginally less dangerous than monstrous skeletons, unless you happened to be in the Land of Fiction at the time.

Jamie looked uneasily at the bookshelves, which towered high above him, and considered his options.  It didn't look like any of these books were nice, easy-to-read maps of a little blue box who you'd inadvertently offended, but just in case he was missing some sort of obvious hint, he pulled a book out at random and flipped through it.

The book was called _A Brief Introduction to_ _Transdimensional Harmonics, With Appendices Regarding Their Influences on the Histories, Peoples, and Cultures of the Planets of the Milky Way Galaxy_.  It was eight hundred pages long.  There were complicated diagrams with fiddly little paper bits that you were apparently supposed to unfold and hold out from the page, in order to fully understand the author's meaning.

Jamie put the book back, hurriedly, before his head started to hurt.  "Look, I'm sorry I called you a pile of old bolts," he snapped, to no one in particular.

"Is somebody there?" he heard someone shout in the distance.

Jamie paused.  The TARDIS hadn't answered him, had it?  It'd been a female voice, but then, he knew sea-captains always talked about ships like they were ladies.  Perhaps the TARDIS was like that.

"Er.  Can you hear me?" he said again, a little nervously.  He had no idea what he would say to the TARDIS, given the chance to speak with it.

"Jamie?  Where are you?" the voice said again, and he was relieved when he realized it was only Zoe.

"Zoe!  Stay where you are, I'll find you," said Jamie, following the sound of Zoe's voice.  He discovered her near a chair with an immense pile of books on the table next to it.  Of _course_.  "You're a sight for sore eyes," he said.  "Do you know the way out?"

"No," she said, her face falling.  "I thought you'd know, surely.  Didn't you keep track of the way you came?"

"Aye, well, normally I would but I think the TARDIS doesn't want me to find my way back," he said, frowning.

"...The TARDIS?  That's ridiculous, Jamie, it's not as though it's _alive,_ " Zoe said.  She tsked.  He knew he shouldn't have mentioned that idea of his, and prepared himself for a lecture on his primitive and superstitious ways.  But Zoe only said, "We'll find our way out."

"Well, how'd _you_ end up here?" he asked.  "Weren't you trying to help the Doctor... shoot at trouble, or something?"  Did Zoe even know how to shoot?

She sighed.  "Oh, I _was_ trying to help, but he was just plain _trying._   You know how the Doctor is.  So I got frustrated with him and wandered off, and... well, I couldn't find my way back.  You know, I _have_ got a photographic memory, I _never_ get lost, I don't know _what_ went wrong."  She sighed.  "I ended up here, and I couldn't find my way out, so I thought, might as well make the best of a bad situation, and _also_ the Doctor has got all the issues of the _Hourly Telepress_ I've missed, so I've been catching up on the Karkus!  ...And, you know, reading up on astrophysics.  Obviously.  Do you know, there's a way for a star to collapse in just the right way so as to create --"

"No," said Jamie, "and I don't want to, not right now.  We've got to get out of here!  Maybe the TARDIS likes you better," he added.

She sighed.  "The TARDIS is just a _machine,_ " she said.  She looked at him again, taking in the towel wrapped around his shoulders and his damp hair.  "...Jamie, have you been _swimming?_ "

"Aye, there's a sort of concrete -- basin -- sort of --"  He made an explanatory sort of gesture.  "Like a rectangular lake!  Only smelly."

Zoe apparently found this amusing, because she was having trouble keeping a straight face.  "There's a _swimming pool?_ "

"I don't know if --"

"It's an awful waste of water, out in space," said Zoe, "but I suppose the Doctor doesn't follow ordinary rules, does he?  I haven't been swimming since I left home!  I'd like to see that."

"Well you might change your mind after you see it," said Jamie.  "It smells _awful_.  But, hey, I have an idea.  The way I came in, the TARDIS just dumped me into the -- the swimming pool, you said? -- and I couldn't get back through the door.  But now," he said, gesturing at one of the library ladders, "we've got _these._ "

"Sounds like a plan," said Zoe.  "Where's the pool?"

"Just through the museum over here," he said.  He unhooked one of the library ladders.  "Here, you take the other end and I'll show you."

"There's a _museum?_ " she said, equally delighted and disbelieving.

"Aye," he said, "well, sort of."  He guided her through the library stacks, and found the archway he'd come into the library through.  "It's full of strange alien beasties, though, so -- it's just around the corner."

But when he turned the corner, he didn't recognize the room at all.  "Oh no!" he said.

"What's wrong?" Zoe asked.  "Oh, this is _beautiful!_ " she said, pausing to examine a painting on one of the walls.  "I didn't know the Doctor was fond of art."

"But this isn't where I came in at all!" Jamie said.

"Well, it's a museum, isn't it?" said Zoe.  "Maybe you misremembered."

"No, no, no, it was full of _bones_ ," said Jamie.  "Giant terrifying monsters with three heads, that sort of thing.  This is all... pictures of trees," he said.

"Well, I don't know anything about art, but I think they're rather pretty," said Zoe.

Jamie was in a bad mood, though, so none of the paintings looked any good.  "Whoever did this one thinks grass is supposed to be _red_ , though.  Who ever heard of red grass?"

"Perhaps it's alien grass," said Zoe.  "I think it's very nice!"

"Hmph," said Jamie, patently unimpressed.  He moved on quickly.

"Oof -- Jamie, I'm still carrying this stupid thing," she said, adjusting the ladder.  "Oh, you're as bad as the Doctor sometimes, do you know that?"

"What?  No I'm not!" Jamie said, pulling a face.  "What d'you mean, bad as the Doctor?  I'm never.  That's _you._ "

"I mean when things don't go your way you're all grumpy."  She rolled her eyes.  "Isn't it _nice_ to be exploring without monsters coming after us?"

"Aye, well, I'd feel better if we could find our way out," said Jamie.  He was still certain the TARDIS was playing with them, but Zoe wasn't going to be convinced until she saw it for herself.

"Oh, that should be easy," said Zoe.  "If you can't remember where you came from, we can just systematically try every route until we get back to somewhere we remember."

"As long as the corridors don't go changing on us," said Jamie.

Zoe tsked.  "You'll see.  We'll get there eventually.  Now, if we knew we were dealing with a proper mathematical maze, we could just follow one wall, but --"

There was a noise from behind them, a sort of strange _whoosh_ that Jamie felt more than he heard.  The two of them turned around instantly, Jamie readying himself to fight, but there was no monster.  It was just that, quite suddenly, the way they'd come had vanished.  There was no long meandering corridor full of strange broken statues and paintings of aliens, just a dead end.

And, as if to spite him, the landscape with the red grass was on display right in the center of the new dead end.

"...Oh.  Well," said Zoe, slightly shakily.

"Now do you believe me?" Jamie asked.

"Well, it does complicate things a bit," said Zoe.  "But there _must_ be a way out.  Perhaps the corridors change predictably and we can work out the pattern?"  But she didn't sound as if she believed it.

They continued on in the same direction they'd been headed, but of course, nothing was familiar to Jamie.  He kept looking over at Zoe, hoping she'd realize she'd seen something before, but she looked as mystified as he'd ever seen her.  There was a two-headed statue on a pedestal in the middle of the room, made of some shimmery green stuff, and enough old coins to fill a treasure chest.  Every now and again there was another _whoosh_ and a new branch of corridor would appear behind them, or an old one would close off.

"One, one, two, three, five, eight... now if the next corridor that changes is thirteen I'll know," she muttered under her breath.

"What?" Jamie asked.

There was a _whoosh_ , and the corridor changed, and Zoe's face fell.

"Was it thirteen?" Jamie asked, with nary a clue as to what this meant.

"No," said Zoe.  "That was ten.  I was hoping they were going in a Fibonacci sequence, but --"

"I told you," said Jamie, "the TARDIS is doing this on purpose, it's got to be!"

"I suppose," said Zoe, "but it'd have to be very advanced technology."  They continued on, _whoosh_ es following them.  "That's eleven, twelve..."  She peered down a corridor that was emphatically not disappearing.  "You know, Jamie, I think you're right," she said, putting her end of the ladder down and folding her arms.  "I think the TARDIS is being _mathematically spiteful._ "  She glared at the corridor.

"Is that number thirteen, then?" Jamie said.   He supposed they wouldn't be getting back to the swimming pool anytime soon, so he laid the ladder on its side, against one wall.

"Yes it is," she said, icily, and then, without waiting for him, strode down the corridor with determination.  "You know, the Doctor never mentioned anything about an artificial intelligence."

"Eh?" Jamie asked, frowning.  "Look, d'you really think it's a good idea -- I mean, corridor thirteen -- I --"

"It _might_ be," said Zoe, ignoring his questions pointedly, "like those International Electromatics computers we just dealt with.  But you know how the Doctor feels about computers.  And the TARDIS isn't particularly digital..."

"Zoe," said Jamie, "Zoe, stop."

"Oh, I _know,_ " she sighed.  "The Doctor and I go on and on about modern things and it must be hard for you to --"

"No," he said, putting his arm out.  "Stop.  We've passed that ugly green statue before.  Just a minute ago.  And look, back there is the ladder!"

"...We _did_ ," said Zoe.  "But we went the other way, and then we didn't make any turns.  Did we?"

"Now do you believe me?" he asked.

"Yes I do," she sighed.  She looked back the way they came, then forward, and then back at Jamie, and it was clear from her face that she'd finally realized just how lost they were.

Finally, Zoe broke the silence.  "What do we do now?"

"Dunno," he said.  "Haven't you got any ideas?  To do with ...with computers?"

She sighed.  "I don't even know if it _is_ a computer, Jamie.  I mean -- you know, some of the things the Doctor was trying to fix today looked almost _organic._ "  He had no idea what that was supposed to mean, and his expression must have said as much, because she added, "You know, like they were _alive._ "

"Oh," said Jamie.  "Well of course the TARDIS is alive."

Zoe frowned.  "Have you got any ideas?"

"Well," said Jamie.  "We could try apologizing to the TARDIS.  Not that we've really _done_ anything," he added grumpily.  Zoe elbowed him, hard.  "Ow!  What was that for?"

"You're not helping," said Zoe.  She cleared her throat, and spoke to the empty air.  "TARDIS, we're, er, really sorry.  About, well, whatever it is we've done."

"We're sorry you were shot at by Cybermen?" Jamie suggested.

"Oh!  Yes!" said Zoe.  "And blown up in the Land of Fiction."

"And there was that volcano," said Jamie.

"Yes, we're sorry about all of it!" Zoe called.

Nothing at all happened.

Jamie sighed.  "Come on, let's keep going.  We'll get where we're going when the TARDIS is good and ready, not before."

Zoe snorted.  "So nothing new, then."

As they walked, they did not seem to be going in circles any longer, and before long, Jamie noticed something that buoyed his spirits and made him walk a little faster.

"What is it?  Do you see something up ahead?" Zoe asked.

"No, but can't you smell food?" Jamie asked.  There was a savory sort of smell in the air, and he knew it could be a trap, but it was something different, and besides, he was hungry.

"Now that you mention it..."  She took a deep breath.  "I am hungry.  How long have we been walking, anyway?  Although I suppose that's a silly question to ask when you're lost in a time machine," she reasoned.

"All I know is we're not going to starve as long as we get there before everything changes on us again," said Jamie.

The paintings on the walls went from alien landscapes to still-lifes with fruits and vegetables, and soon the walls were lined with pots and pans instead of paintings.  Instead of museum white, the walls were a soft yellow, and when they got to the kitchen table, Jamie nearly cheered.

There was an entire roast, with potatoes and carrots, and some sort of fruit pudding, and a lot of food Jamie didn't recognize at all -- some sort of bright orange meat in sauce, a pile of complicated-looking sandwiches, and a bowl full of wobbly clear blue stuff.

"Ooh, I haven't had proper tandoori since I left to train for the Wheel," said Zoe, enthusiastically heaping her plate with bright red meat.  "Once my friend Nila tried to sort of fake it up with the food machines in the uni cafeteria, but you can't get artificial food cubes to be very spicy, even if they do say everything tastes like chicken.  ...Would you like some?"

"Er," he said, hesitating, but Zoe put a piece on his plate anyway, and it wasn't bad, although he was still a little dubious about bizarre red space food.

As they feasted, it seemed to Jamie that every time they looked up, there was more food.  A lot of it Jamie hadn't heard of, and some of which was foreign to both of them, but most of it was delicious.

"Do you think this is the TARDIS' idea of an apology?" Zoe asked.  She was carefully separating her chocolate cake from the sweet icing on top so that she could save the icing for last.

"Dunno, probably," said Jamie, taking another plum from the bowl.  It would be a pity to let fresh fruit go to waste.  "Either that or it's poisoning us.  Least we'll die happy," he said.  "We should probably take some of this with us, just in case."  After some poking around in the cabinets, they found a picnic basket, and packed it with all the food and drink that would fit, just in case the TARDIS should change its mind about keeping them fed.

And when they got up to leave, they found that once again, the way they'd come in was now a blank wall.  In fact, while they had been packing the picnic basket, it seemed, the kitchen had become rather a small, cozy room.  There was only one door out.  It was propped open with a large cardboard box, on which had been scrawled, in messy handwriting, "SUSAN -- BOOKS + SCHOOLWORK," but the doorway was rather ominously dark.

"Well, we've only got one choice, haven't we?" Zoe said.

"I'll go first," said Jamie.  He drew his knife, and eased slowly into the room, which was very dark.  As his eyes adjusted, he saw rows and rows of cushioned seats coalesce from the darkness, and when he looked to the front of the room, there was a bright wall, with light shining on it from a high window in the back wall.

"Oh," said Zoe, cheerfully.  "It's an old-fashioned cinema," said Zoe.

"Eh?" he asked.

"It's a theater," said Zoe.

"Oh, that makes sense," said Jamie.  "But what about the actors?"

She laughed.  "See up there?" she said, pointing to a tiny window at the back of the room, where all the light seemed to be coming from.

"Oh, I see," said Jamie.  "The actors are up there?  ...Are they doing shadow puppets?"

Zoe frowned.  "Well, actually..."  Jamie waited patiently for her to embark upon a long and useless explanation about photons or muons or croutons.  "Yes," she said, finally.  "Yes they are, Jamie.  It's a lot like shadow puppets.  Come on, let's find our seats."

Almost as soon as they had settled in, the room went completely dark, and Jamie got ready to run or fight or duck, but then pictures appeared on the screen.

The play, such as it was, opened with a man bundling a little girl up and telling her that they had to leave -- but then the scene changed abruptly, to an eccentric pirate and his protégé.  They were stealing a ship, it seemed, and though Jamie was skeptical of their methods, they got their ship in the end.  But then, suddenly, the scene changed to a house falling out of the air, and the music was loud and frantic.

"What sort of play is this?" Jamie whispered.

Zoe shushed him.  "They're all from different films," she said.

"But what's the point of --"

"Jamie, this is the best part!  Just watch," she said.

And they watched as the house landed, and the girl inside said something to her dog.  Jamie missed what she said, though, because he'd just realized the pirates had been in color, but the girl and her house were all different shades of brown.  "Why is there no color?  Is something wrong in that little room upstairs?" Jamie asked.

"Shhhh!" Zoe said.  And the girl walked silently to the door, she opened it slowly to reveal a strange and brightly-colored world.

"Oh," said Jamie, suddenly realizing what was going on.

"Isn't it brilliant?" said Zoe, fondly.  "I do love that scene."

"No, no, no," said Jamie, "I mean, they're from different stories, but really it's all the same story, isn't it?  The house is the TARDIS."

"...oh," said Zoe.  "Oh, that might be it."  She considered this.  "The pirates at the beginning -- do you think the TARDIS is stolen?"

"Oh, now, that's not a very nice thing to say about the Doctor," said Jamie.

"Yes, but it would explain a _lot_ about why he doesn't know how to pilot it," said Zoe.

They watched as characters exited every manner of conveyance -- ships, carriages, flying machines -- and found themselves in strange places and among odd people.  All of them came running back eventually.  Four mop-haired young men fled from an enormous crowd -- a man flat-out ran, to strangely cheerful music -- two men in black suits and dark glasses fled down a tunnel, climbed into an automobile, and sped away.

Then more scenes: a sea-captain shouting orders to cut the sails as a storm crashed around them, a flash of lighting and a car disappearing in two long streaks of fire, a horse slowly sinking into a swamp, a man shouting with rage because someone had stolen his car.  Jamie supposed this must be what the TARDIS went through, and when the TARDIS put it like that, it must be a bit traumatic, getting taken around on trips and never getting repairs or thanks or rest.

And then there was a girl on the screen, about Jamie and Zoe's age.  She stood next to a boy, but she looked terribly distressed and stepped forward.  And there was something off about the scene.  Jamie couldn't tell what it was at first, but then he realized -- there was no music anymore.

"Zoe," he said, "is this from -- what d'you call it, a film?"

"I don't recognize it," she said, leaning forward to see.

The girl looked up, and shouted "Grandfather!"

"Susan, please.  I've double-locked the doors, you can't get in," came a voice from somewhere in the distance.

Jamie looked at Zoe.  She was staring at the scene, utterly perplexed, as the man off-screen explained to his granddaughter that she couldn't stay with him, that she ought to settle down, that he would come back -- and the girl was having trouble not crying.  "One day," said her grandfather, "I shall come back.  Yes, I shall come back.  Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties."  This didn't reassure her at all, apparently, and Jamie felt awful for her.  "Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.  Goodbye, Susan.  Goodbye, my dear!"

And then there was that very, very familiar sound -- the one this day had started with, really -- the boom the TARDIS made when it left an old planet behind, or brought them to a brand new one so they could leave it and go off adventuring.

And then there was that funny, familiar wheezing noise, and the entire scene with the girl dissolved slowly until they were looking into a long tunnel of space-time.

The next scene was similar.  From a distance, they watched a couple arguing with an old man, shouting that they wanted to go home.  There was a different girl with them now, and she didn't seem to have much to say, but the old man was insulted.  "I've tried for two years to get you both home!" he snapped.

"Well, you haven't been very successful, have you?" demanded the other man.

They argued, they wandered away, and when the old man and the girl came back, the others were gone.

"...Jamie," said Zoe, "I know this sounds mad, but I think that old man is the Doctor."

"Of course he is," said Jamie.  "You can't miss the Doctor, he always sounds a bit mad."

"But why does he look so different?" Zoe asked.

"Ben and Polly said he had to change his face once," said Jamie.  "Because... time travel makes you get old faster, I think they said?  And -- and I think they mentioned the Cybermen.  They said he'd never met 'em before, and he didn't know what he was doing."

Zoe shuddered.  "A first encounter with them would make anyone change their face, if they could."

The scenes sped up now.  People walked away -- away from the TARDIS, Jamie thought -- and sometimes they said goodbye and wished him well, but sometimes they just seemed to vanish.  Sometimes new people came along, but they always left in the end.  And sure enough, one day the elderly man and a dark-haired girl came out of the TARDIS, but Ben and Polly returned with him.  So Jamie was not at all surprised to see himself and the Doctor -- _their_ Doctor -- along with Ben and Polly in the next scene.  And then, as Jamie had expected, the picture changed to a figure on a beach, far in the distance, waving at Jamie and the Doctor as they made their way out towards the TARDIS.

"Is that the girl from the past you were traveling with?" Zoe asked.

"She wasn't from the past!" said Jamie.  "She was from 1866!"

"Oh, well, of course," said Zoe.

Jamie knew she was only humoring him, but he did miss Victoria.  "I still don't think we should've left her there with those strangers," he said.

"But the Doctor said she wanted to go," Zoe said, frowning.  "...Didn't she?"

"Well, she was wrong," said Jamie, grumpily.  "Would you leave?  _I_ wouldn't.  I would've --"  He stopped, because now the picture was of him and Zoe, sitting in the front row of an empty theater.

And then the TARDIS showed them one more scene -- Zoe and Jamie, just as they were now, walking away from the TARDIS on a strange planet, leaving it behind entirely, not looking back.

"Oh, that's not _really_ us," said Jamie, to the TARDIS.  "We'd never!"

"Well," said Zoe, "I suppose if I found something _really interesting_... but I'd say goodbye!" she added hastily.  "Besides, what's more interesting than a time machine?"

"A time machine that dunks you into twelve feet of water when it's angry," Jamie muttered under his breath.

"Jamie!" said Zoe.

"What?  It's true!" said Jamie.

"The TARDIS must like me better than you," she said.  "I only ended up in the library.  Oh, I do hope I can find my way back sometime.  I didn't put any of those books away, did I?"

The Jamie and Zoe on the screen turned around and headed back into the TARDIS cheerfully, whereupon it vanished, as the TARDIS was wont to do.

THE END?, said the TARDIS, in very large fancy letters on the screen.  And then the words disappeared, and were replaced, very briefly, with the words THANK YOU.

The lights came up and a door near the front of the room opened, golden light spilling temptingly out.

They hurried towards it.  Zoe thanked the TARDIS politely; Jamie grabbed the picnic basket, just in case.  But they emerged into the control room, where the Doctor appeared to be sitting under the console doing some arcane repair work.  He held an electric torch in his teeth and was wrestling with a stubborn bit of circuitry.

"Eh oo aar!" said the Doctor through a mouthful of plastic, then put the circuit down and took the torch out in his mouth.  "I mean, there you are," he repeated.  "Where have you been?  I think I've fixed the problem."  As he was clambering out from under the console, the TARDIS doors opened, to show beautiful rolling hills covered in green grass.  "You see?  Good as new!"

"You fixed the problem?" said Jamie.  " _We_ fixed the problem."

"I think the TARDIS was just worried about us leaving," Zoe added, helpfully, and Jamie wished he could tell the Zoe of earlier today what she'd just said now.

"Worried?  The TARDIS?" the Doctor asked, frowning at them.  "Ah, well, stranger things have happened.  Often to me."   He looked out at the lush green landscape.  "I do believe we've come to the Eye of Orion," he said.  "It's an excellent place for a picnic!  Good thinking, Jamie," he told Jamie.

"What?" Jamie asked.  He looked down at the picnic basket in his hand.  "Oh, this.  We just ate.  The TARDIS fed us."

"Hmph.  The TARDIS didn't feed _me._   That's gratitude for you," said the Doctor.  "Come on, come on, let me show you the Eye of Orion," he said, waving them out the door.  "No Daleks, no Cybermen -- no intelligent life at all, actually, but it's very peaceful," he said as he followed them out.  "You see, on account of the high ionization of the atmosphere..."  Jamie tuned him out, and looked around at their surroundings instead.

It _was_ a very beautiful place -- lush and green and verdant, and Jamie could see why the Doctor was so fond of it.  Nothing broke the silence, except the song of birds and the sound of --

"Excuse me!"  They turned to see a small group of people walking up the hill.  They were wearing brightly-colored shirts and shorts, and wearing cameras 'round their necks.  All in all, they looked extraordinarily human.  The balding man in front frowned at the TARDIS, then at the Doctor, Zoe, and Jamie.

"...Is there a problem?" the Doctor asked.

"Is this where the garden tours meet?" the man asked earnestly.

"Er," said the Doctor.  "Well."

"Have you got any postcards?" asked one of the women in the group.

"I don't -- I'm not really --"  The Doctor looked at Jamie and Zoe, and then at the tour group.  "We don't work here, actually.  Would you be so kind as to tell us where we are?  I'm afraid we're a little turned around."

The tour group was only too happy to inform them that they were at a place called Plas Brondanw, which was in Wales, and once they were out of earshot, Jamie and Zoe looked at the Doctor.

"You were saying?" Zoe asked.  "Very peaceful, no intelligent life?  High ionization?"

"Yes, Doctor!  Tell us about the Eye of Orion!" said Jamie.

"Well, nobody's right _all_ the time," said the Doctor.

**Author's Note:**

> Aside from the usual fanfictional borrowing, the Doctor saying goodbye to Susan and his later argument with Ian and Barbara are quoted from "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" and "The Chase," respectively.


End file.
